A reflection of teacher Glenn Corey as he teaches students how to hack toys at Novato High School in Novato, Calif., on Tuesday, February 4, 2014. The Paul Allen foundation included Corey for first awards in teaching innovation and entrepreneurship.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

A reflection of teacher Glenn Corey as he teaches students how to...

Image 5 of 16

Teacher Glenn Corey shows students tools in a wood shop he rehabilitated at Novato High School in Novato, Calif., on Tuesday, February 4, 2014. The Paul Allen foundation included Corey for first awards in teaching innovation and entrepreneurship.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Teacher Glenn Corey shows students tools in a wood shop he...

Image 6 of 16

Teacher Glenn Corey (middle) talks with juniors Jeff Escamilla (left), 16 years old, and Chase McCoy (right) as they work on an autonomous robot at Novato High School in Novato, Calif., on Tuesday, February 4, 2014. The Paul Allen foundation included Corey for first awards in teaching innovation and entrepreneurship.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Teacher Glenn Corey (middle) talks with juniors Jeff Escamilla...

Image 7 of 16

Teacher Glenn Corey shows students tools in a wood shop he rehabilitated at Novato High School in Novato, Calif., on Tuesday, February 4, 2014. The Paul Allen foundation included Corey for first awards in teaching innovation and entrepreneurship.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Teacher Glenn Corey shows students tools in a wood shop he...

Image 8 of 16

Students work on logos during a project design class at Novato High School in Novato, Calif., on Tuesday, February 4, 2014. The Paul Allen foundation included their project design teacher Glenn Corey for first awards in teaching innovation and entrepreneurship.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Students work on logos during a project design class at Novato High...

Image 9 of 16

Teacher Glenn Corey (middle) shows his product design class at Novato High School in Novato, Calif., on Tuesday, February 4, 2014. The Paul Allen foundation included Corey for first awards in teaching innovation and entrepreneurship.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Teacher Glenn Corey (middle) shows his product design class at...

Image 10 of 16

Teacher Glenn Corey shows students tools in a wood shop he rehabilitated at Novato High School in Novato, Calif., on Tuesday, February 4, 2014. The Paul Allen foundation included Corey for first awards in teaching innovation and entrepreneurship.

Photo: Liz Hafalia, The Chronicle

Teacher Glenn Corey shows students tools in a wood shop he...

Image 11 of 16

Collaborator/teacher Lili Weckler (right) works with students on a writing project at the Brightworks School in San Francisco, Calif. on Tuesday, Feb. 4, 2014.

He is one of two Bay Area educators among the first recipients of a new award announced Wednesday from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation designed to recognize and support K-12 teachers who promote innovation and entrepreneurialism in the classroom.

Corey calls his product design class "succeeding by failing."

"Because of the emphasis on high-stakes testing, students have responded by thinking they must be right all the time. If you give them a clearly prescribed problem, they can solve it," he says.

"When you head into the real world, things are not so clear cut. No one says, here are the problems I need you to solve and they are carefully constructed to have one answer. You have to figure out: What you don't know, what information you have to gather, what testing you have to do, how do you try another angle and another and another. You have to run into a wall and learn resilience. That's a tool you can use in the future."

The other local winner of the Allen Distinguished Educators award - Gever Tulley, founder of the Brightworks School in San Francisco - also aims to bring the real world into the classroom.

"We are trying to identify and then recognize classroom teachers who themselves are innovative and entrepreneurial and applying that innovation and creativity to provide opportunities for their students to learn entrepreneurship or engineering," says Dave Ferrero, the foundation's senior program officer for education.

'Something unique'

The foundation hired Inverness Research to help identify teachers on the West Coast who were "doing something unique, something they had created themselves ... and who are relatively unsung," Ferrero says.

A long list was narrowed down to 20 teachers, who were invited to apply. Seventeen did and seven won $25,000 in initial funding - with the possibility of much more down the line to expand their programs.

Corey and Tulley "were good exemplars of what we were looking for," Ferrero says.

Corey's class only started last year, when he rejuvenated an old wood shop that had been used for storage, installed computers and got $20,000 worth of free software from Autodesk.

His first class had only 16 students. This year 39 applied, but he could only accept 29 because he only has 29 computers.

Students learn ideation, computer-aided design, communication and presentation skills and "how to collaborate with modern tools and documentation." Next year, he wants to teach computer programming and advanced product design.

In one project, each student had to design one part of a giant Rube Goldberg machine, making sure it connected with the part before and the part after.

He also teaches "toy hacking" - taking apart old electronic toys and recreating them. Students use Arduino, an open-source hardware platform that, when paired with open-source software, lets them create working product prototypes.

Yoda head

One group of students took the Yoda head from a "Star Wars" eight ball, put it on a spider toy, and replaced its eyes with sensors. The finished invention "chases you around the room," Corey says.

It's not all fun and games. Corey tries to hammer home the three C's of product design: cost, customers and competition.

"For me, it is all about user-centered design," says Corey, who took a circuitous route to education. He majored in chemical engineering at UC Berkeley, worked for Apple and Motorola, studied mosquitoes, made documentaries and designed toys.

He got his start teaching about four years ago when he was dropping his daughter off at the Marin School of the Arts, which shares the Novato High campus, and the principal asked if he could take over an earth science class whose teacher had abruptly left.

Today he teaches physics and advanced-placement physics, but it was his product-design class that wowed the foundation.

Corey plans to use the Allen money to expand his class, possibly nationwide. He also wants to encourage other mid-career professionals to consider education.

"I'm trying to open the door for people who spent a lifetime doing interesting things and want to share," he says.

Tulley's school, which is just 3 years old, is founded on "experienced-based learning: using real tools, real materials, real problems in the real world to create real education."

The private school houses 35 students from kindergarten through ninth grade in a 10,000-square-foot former Best Foods mayonnaise plant at 18th and Bryant streets. The plan is to expand it to 70 kids through grade 12. Tuition is in the mid-$20,000 range.

Student builders

Students helped build out the interior, which includes a combination performing arts-play center and a bridge, as well as a "fab lab" with traditional tools as well as 3-D printers and laser cutters.

The school is not accredited, which requires "bravery from parents and staff who teach without textbooks," says Aleksandra Vikati, whose 8-year-old twins attend. "It's jumping off a cliff of sorts, a distinct alternative to a traditional school."

Many parents come from the entrepreneurial and creative professions. Vikati and her husband started an online video-search company they sold to Tribune Co.

The curriculum is focused on what Tulley calls "the arc." Students select a topic, like salt. First comes exploration (think field trips and hands-on experiences), then expression (taking an idea and manifesting it in the real world) and finally exposition (presenting the experience to others).

Tulley, who speaks at TED conferences, calls himself a "self-taught computer scientist with 30 years of experience in technology and innovation." His last job before starting Brightworks was manager of innovation at Adobe.

Although the Allen Foundation has long supported science, technology, engineering and math education in the Pacific Northwest, this is its first venture into "entrepreneurship education for young people," Ferrero says.